12/7/20

The Journey of a Writer

            As a writer and a thinker, I did not expect myself to improve much I my writing, but I proved that wrong. What I have learned from this semester is that I was able to recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages, and their users. This can be shown from in the lens of “Mother Tongue” from Amy Tan where I am able to understand her perspective and emotions of feeling oppressed and denied through her use of rhetorical devices. I learned from her thoughts how people in society everyday no matter their gender, skin color or looks language plays a large deal in how we as people perform in society. Also, in my writings and essays I was able to use her perspective and rhetorical devices to expand my point of view on how language has effects other aspects of human society.

            When view Amy’s text on “Mother Tongue”, I was able to understand her point of view since my family has also experience the same emotions of rejection or the lack of fluency made it more difficult to communicate with others. She stated “I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.” (Tan, 2) From this I was able to understand the meaning of how language made people feel oppressed, how it gave others power to do whatever they can or to hierarchize language. Furthermore, from my own essay I had stated “We see that Amy is ashamed that her mother’s English was not perfect and how people in stores and public areas denied them access like they were not human. Amy projects her feelings to evoke the emotion of embarrassment to the reader which leads to the feeling of nothingness.” From my own explanation, I was able to further decrypt the true meaning behind Amy’s text and how her rhetorical devices had created that influence that targeted certain a certain audience.

             Overall, as a writer and thinker, I have improved my understanding of how my writing has improves and how language as the power to change how society performs. We see how through text and explanation on how others had felt through language and the hierarchy it had created. It formed a different type of power where if one can understand other languages, they have all the power compared to someone that only knows one. Furthermore, through personal experience language as the power to shift the good or bad whether it is through a conversation, a book or an online blog has the power to change what we do as people.

Reference

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue”. 1990. Blackboard, https://bbhosted.cuny.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-51065394-dt-content-rid-398267210_1/xid-398267210_1